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Last modified:
  30 Mar 2009
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Novarra says screen scraping is ARPU increaser

by Tony Dennis

Either you are trying to promote your own mobile browser or not, surely? Well, Novarra - which offers screen scraping technology - displayed a split personality over this particular issue in a press briefing.

The company is adamant that getting mobile phone users to employ their handsets as the primary means of Internet access is the way forward and will increase ARPU for network operators.

It claimed that the iPhone - for example, increases AT&T's ARPU from subscribers using data services from $59 to $95 per month.

And - as well all know - the iPhone has a full HTML browser. But it still can't support Adobe Flash apparently. Even the rumoured iPhone 3 won't do this, the company claims.

So the answer is that network operators stick one of Novarra's servers in the middle and it enables the whole gamut of mobile phones to see pages which were really designed for the desktop. Including Flash, of course.

Fine. So you don't need to change your browser. Or do you? Well, Novarra reckons the forthcoming version of its own 'micro browser' is the Bee's Knees.

It has a clever 'magnify' capability, for example, which splits the screen in two. The top half shows an image of the whole page, while the bottom shows the bit you've zoomed in on. Nice.

The browser also always offers the user three specific icons at the bottom of every page it renders. These are 'Goto'; 'Page'; and 'Tools'. Again this is very clever.

If you want a demo, point your browser here. Given the browser can run under Java and Ajax, it can be preloaded onto the cheapest handsets money can buy.

Just as I was sold on the idea of deploying Novarra's browser across an operator's entire range of handsets, the company suddenly demoed its widget capability.

This technology enables developers to create one widget which will run in virtually every browser there is available. Novarra showed a typical LBS style 'Near Me' widget to prove this.

Make your minds up. Do you want to prove your technology can run everywhere? Or do you want everybody to use your browser? Answers on a postcard.